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The Council on American-Islamic Relations quietly revised the September 11th section of its national 2026-2027 back-to-school guide one day after Jewish Onliner published an investigation into the organization’s recommended classroom materials.
The original guide directed educators, administrators and school boards to a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” among its high school resources. By August 26, CAIR had removed its endorsement of and link to the curriculum and added a note claiming that an earlier version “did not go through proper vetting.” Yet CAIR National had promoted the same curriculum in its 2025–26 back-to-school guide.
CAIR did not publicly announce the change, identify who failed to vet the material or say whether Jewish Onliner’s reporting prompted the revision.
CAIR Quietly Removes Its Endorsement of 9/11 Curriculum
Jewish Onliner published its investigation on August 25 after reviewing CAIR’s newly released nationwide guide and the materials to which it directed American schools.
The original 9/11 section told readers that CAIR-New Jersey and Teaching While Muslim had developed a “comprehensive” curriculum for elementary, middle and high school classrooms. It said the resource included recommended texts, videos, discussion questions and teaching strategies.
The section concluded:
“Access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”
This was more than a passing reference. CAIR National explicitly instructed readers to access the curriculum and circulate it among educators, administrators and local school boards.
By August 26, the paragraph and hyperlink had been removed from the online guide. The revised version retains the heading “25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” but no longer names CAIR-New Jersey, Teaching While Muslim or their curriculum.
The replacement text states:
“Comprehensive lesson plans would address the 9/11 attack itself, the victims and families impacted, and the aftermath of the attack, such as the war in Afghanistan, changes in national security, and the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against American Muslim and perceived-Muslim communities.”
CAIR Cites “Proper Vetting” Failure
CAIR also added a note addressing the earlier material:
“An earlier version of the document did not go through proper vetting and included a link to a primary source document that was removed in November 2025.”
The note does not identify the primary source by name. In context, however, it appears to refer to bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” which the curriculum listed as a high school background resource through a link to the full manifesto published by The Guardian.
CAIR says it generally supports referring readers to primary-source documents, but now maintains that documents connected to the 9/11 perpetrators are “best reviewed at the post K-12 level” and alongside other materials. It names a fatwa against terrorism, a 2014 open letter rejecting ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s interpretation of Islam and the 9/11 Commission Report as examples of the additional context it considers necessary.
The explanation represents a significant change from the original national guide, which explicitly encouraged educators and school boards to access and distribute the CAIR-New Jersey curriculum.
CAIR’s Explanation Leaves Timeline Unresolved
The note does not explain why CAIR National nevertheless released a guide in August 2026 directing K-12 educators to the curriculum. Moreover, CAIR-New Jersey’s own September 2022 announcement continued to link to a copy listing The Guardian’s full text of bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” while a separate copy remained available through the University of Pittsburgh-hosted website of the Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies.
The curriculum also contained several additional elements documented in the original investigation. It described the September 11 perpetrators as “a group self-identifying as AlQaeda” rather than explicitly identifying them as terrorists. It presented American support for Israel, the Persian Gulf War and the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East as explanations for the attacks.
Its recommended background materials also included V for Vendetta, a film centered on a masked revolutionary who attacks government buildings.
CAIR’s new note does not address those elements individually. Instead, the organization has removed its national guide’s entire recommendation and hyperlink to the curriculum.
Rest of K-12 Guide Remains Intact
The visible revisions are narrowly focused on the 9/11 section. The guide still describes itself as an expansion of CAIR’s “Unhostile Campus Campaign” into K-12 schools and retains sections directing students toward pro-Palestinian activism guidance, providing scripts for discussing Gaza with children as young as five and encouraging students to explore terms including “apartheid,” “genocide” and “terrorism.”
The sequence is clear. CAIR National initially instructed educators, administrators and school boards to access and circulate a CAIR-New Jersey curriculum that listed bin Laden’s manifesto. After Jewish Onliner documented the material, the endorsement and hyperlink disappeared. In their place, CAIR added a note claiming that an earlier version had not undergone “proper vetting.”
CAIR has not explained how the recommendation reached its national guide, who failed to vet it or why publicly accessible copies continued to list the manifesto. The organization removed the recommendation, but not the questions raised by how it was placed before K-12 educators in the first place.